The Spy Who Loved Meat

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It was a balmy August evening in Moscow when Maksim Yeremin, the head of the FSB’s anti-terrorism department, tucked into his hearty restaurant dinner. A few hours later, he’d be dead. He’d apparently bitten off more than he could chew.

Yeremin is only the latest in a series bizarre deaths that have befallen Russia’s elite since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To date, over 50 notable Russians have met an untimely end: be it falling out of a window or down a flight of stairs, succumbing to suicide or mysterious health conditions. Whale Hunting has been keeping an eye on the growing list in our research database, and you can read our last story on the topic here: Two Drunk Russians and a Deadly Tribal Tour.

As for Yeremin, the circumstances of his last supper, his history with football hooliganism, and his role at Russia’s intelligence agency – including in its recent counter-terrorism failures – all call for further scrutiny of the ‘death by meat chunk’ debacle. 

In the scarce coverage that followed his death, various Russian media outlets described the night in question with the same calculated phrasing: the 50-year-old “felt unwell due to a piece of meat that got stuck in his airways. [He] was urgently taken to the Vorokhobov Hospital, but they couldn’t save him.” The official cause of death was recorded as “mechanical asphyxiation.” No new details have been reported since.

At first glance, Yeremin’s death doesn’t seem to raise any red flags. Though described as “slightly bizarre” and “anticlimactic” by Russian media pundits, choking to death is a demise of equal opportunity — something that could happen to anyone, and nigh-impossible to orchestrate in advance.